by Heide Goody
“I’ll leave tha with it,” said Rose.
Ella looked at her.
“It’s fine,” Rose reassured her. “I’ve got to sort tha washing and I suppose tha’ll be staying the night?”
The sky beyond the half-drawn curtains was turning a darker blue. Ella nodded and Rose left her. Ella opened the curtains more fully to let the last of the light in. She glanced out over the garden and to the woods beyond, hoping for a sign of the wolf. He might have been a wolf, might even have tried to eat her, but she wanted to know he was unharmed. She couldn’t see anything in the darkening forest. Up above, two distant birds chased each other round.
She returned to the bed and lifted the lid off the box. It contained a cross section of her mother’s life. Small pieces of jewellery that ranged from gold chains to fluorescent plastic earrings tangled with a fountain pen and a wristwatch as she lifted them out. There were a handful of video cassettes, but no obvious way to play them. There was a pair of large photograph albums that creaked dryly as Ella lifted them out, and something wrapped in newspaper.
This was how a box of memories should be, thought Ella: big, bulky, weighty with importance. If she ever had to put together something similar for any of her descendants, it would just contain the memory card from her phone and a link to her social media feed.
She inspected the photo albums first. Flakes of dried glue fell as she opened the first. She smiled. These were pictures she hadn’t seen before. Rose as a twenty-something mum with a prepubescent Natalie. Here, a few years down the line, Natalie as a tall, leggy but shapeless teenager. She turned the page and laughed.
Under a written heading of Rushy Glen, 1974, a picture of three teenagers slouched against a wall. Natalie was all sunburn and freckles, her eyes almost invisible under a heavy fringe. Gavin — “looking slim, dad!” said Ella — was wearing a goofy grin and a pair of shiny shorts that were so high and tight, nothing was left to the imagination. And Myra, the cause of Ella’s laughter, was a striking, almost imperious figure, with a ridiculously frizzy perm that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an international footballer or a German porn star.
A flick through the pages was an accelerated trawl through time. Natalie’s freckles and that impractically long hair were swiftly replaced with a sensible bun and squidgy bundle of flesh and blankets that Ella guessed was herself as a baby. Gavin, often appearing half in shot, was already starting to fill in around the waist. Did work and fatherhood automatically make one fat?
A photograph of Natalie, knitting something shapeless and white. Another, of Natalie with a pram, possibly empty, possibly occupied, outside Nailcote Antiques, where Gavin had worked before setting up by himself. Here, a photo of Granny Rose at Ella’s christening. Ella grunted in surprise. She had always thought of Granny Rose as an old woman, had always remembered her as such, but here she was, holding the baby Ella and she didn’t look a day over forty, barely five years older than Ella was now.
Ella scratched at a mark on the photo. A yellow streak of light wound round Rose’s head and past baby Ella. It was like the trailing flare of a handheld sparkler but no one in the picture appeared to pay it any mind.
Ella considered the video cassettes. Was there a way that she could play these things? There were very few electronics in Granny’s house. An ancient television sat in the corner of the room, but it had no video player that Ella could see. She went back to the shelf and pulled things out. Finding nothing, she went to the shelves on the other side of the chimney breast and eventually found an old video camcorder, a lump of black plastic the size of a breeze block (and which weighed about the same) with a smashed lens. She put one of the cassettes into the camcorder (it took four attempts to get it in the right way up and the right way round) and then realised it had no screen of its own. Some fiddling with some accompanying cables and the tiny television set proved generally fruitless until, by the twiddle of a particular aerial cable or the flick of a critical switch, she couldn’t be sure which, something came to life and Ella heard her mum’s voice for the first time in thirty years.
“Hang on! Hang on!”
Ella scooted back from the screen.
The camera viewpoint swung around a tiny kitchen. It was being carried but not aimed at anything.
“Mummy!” shouted a child’s voice.
“Hang on!” replied Natalie firmly.
Out the back door, down the short grassy garden, underneath the washing line. A young Ella — three? Four years old? — stood by the borders, pointing with muddy fingers.
“Where is it?” said Natalie.
Ella shook her pointing finger and glared as though her mummy was an idiot. Natalie crouched with the camera. The image was blurred for a few seconds before Natalie found the focus.
“Is a fairy,” said Ella.
“No,” said Natalie patiently. “That’s a beetle.”
The fat black insect on the leaf, still but for its waving antennae.
“Fairy?” said Ella.
Natalie laughed.
“No, Ella-Bella. It’s a beetle.”
“Bee-tul.”
“Yes.”
Ella felt her cheeks tighten with emotion. She couldn’t remember her mum’s voice and hearing it now, sounding so very much like her own…
“Squash it?” said little Ella.
“No,” said Natalie. “We only squash fairies, goblins and sprites.”
“Sprites!”
“And what do we do if it’s a fairy?”
“Don’t let fairies come and play. Tell an adult right away.”
“And if it’s Carabosse?”
“Run!” yelled little Ella and, with a playful scream, dashed off down the garden.
The recording ended and the screen turned to static.
Ella took out the photo albums to look for another tape. A flurry of faded Polaroid prints fell out. Most of them appeared to have been taken at Christmas. Young Ella appeared in some of them, looking perhaps a few months younger than she did in the Betamax video. Ella tried to put them in some sort of order. Toddler Ella next to a large red Christmas present. The present now unwrapped to reveal, bizarrely, a wooden spinning wheel as tall as the bemused Ella. Natalie, in a grey and frosty garden, smashing the device apart. Mother and daughter posed together in the lounge in front of a roaring fire composed almost entirely of spinning wheel. In the picture, Natalie wore a grin so fierce and defiant, she might as well have had the word ‘Fuck you’ stitched into her Christmas jumper.
Ella set them aside and pulled out the next video tape. It only took two attempts to get this one in the machine.
It took Ella a few seconds to recognise the setting as the back room of Nailcote Antiques. The camera was a steady tripod shot of the mouldering book stacks and a chair that had been placed before it. Natalie came round and sat at the chair to address the camera directly.
“This is for you. I don’t know how long we’re going to have to keep fighting this thing or who will be doing the fighting.”
Natalie held up her left hand to show the big plaster across the flesh between thumb and forefinger. She looked irritable and tired, her face lined.
Ella’s mum had died — Ella had been told she’d died — at the age of twenty-six. This video couldn’t have been made much before that.
“Fairies,” said Natalie. “Fay. Fee. Fates. The names all mean the same thing. They’re the ones who control what happens. Go back further and it’s all bloody Latin for ‘that which has been spoken.’ It’s the power of words.”
Natalie looked at the thick book on the table in front of her. It was bound in green cloth with gold emboss.
“We can’t kill Carabosse. But we can trap her.” She opened the book. “There’s a story in the One Thousand and One Nights about a fisherman who finds a genie in a bottle. Yeah, like the genie of the lamp. It’s been imprisoned there by King Solomon. Apparently, in myth and legend, that was his thing.”
Natalie pointed to something on the
page not visible at that camera angle.
“There are a lot of similarities between fairies and genies, or djinn. They’re like angels but they’re not angels. They’re like devils but they’re not devils. We just need to find the right bottle to stuff this wicked fairy godmother into.”
She looked directly at the camera again.
“I’ve done the research and added to my mum’s list of rules for handling these creatures. If… If I don’t succeed, maybe they’ll help you succeed in my stead.”
A voice called off-camera, from a distance. It was Gavin.
“Nat, are you talking to someone in there?”
Natalie stood and turned the recording off as she made the opening sounds of a denial.
Ella ejected the videotape and inserted the next. This video was another straight-to-camera piece by Natalie. If nothing else, Ella had the basis of a fine found footage horror movie: Natalie Hannaford: Fairy Hunter.
Natalie was in a shed. The camera was angled down to get a wide workbench in the shot.
Natalie had a large jar in one hand and what looked like a partially melted toy action figure in the other. The melty Action Man kicked and struggled against her hold.
“Okay,” said Natalie in tones that clearly indicated this was not the first take. “Here we have your common or garden boggle.”
The boggle snarled and spat.
“I caught this one at a local farm where it was entertaining itself by making the newborn lambs lame.”
The boggle snickered.
“And here,” said Natalie, “we have a Robinson’s Jam jar which I have inscribed with what Professor Makepeace Alexander assures me is a fair replica of the Seal of Solomon. And now…”
Natalie opened the jam jar one handed and attempted to stuff the slimy goblinoid inside. It resisted and, as she adjusted her grip, it bit deeply into the fleshy part of her left hand. Natalie gave a high-pitched grunt of pain but did not let go. She thrust the creature in, though there was barely room, and forced the lid on top.
Blood poured from her hand and, as she wrapped the wound with an oily rag, the boggle rattled and flexed and cursed inside its prison. With its growing exertions, a sickly green glow surrounded the creature. But it did not break free.
“It works,” said Natalie. She regarded the glowing jar of angry boggle and then her ineffectively bandaged hand. “If you’ve given me rabies,” she told the boggle. “I’m throwing you down a well.”
She stood clumsily and turned the camera off.
Ella gave a start at a sudden rapping at the window. Two bluebirds hovered in front of the glass. Each clutched the sleeve of black-hatted dwarf who was doing his best to cling to the generally smooth and hold-free window.
“What are you doing here?” said Ella.
“Oh, that’s a fine hello,” said Passive Aggressive. “Not a ‘how do you do’ or a ‘can I possibly help you inside?’ Oh, no, not from Little Miss Egocentric.”
At the edge of the forest, Ella could see purple, green, brown, red and yellow hats bobbing through the tall grass.
“Go away!” Ella hissed through the glass.
“Oh, I suppose you don’t want rescuing?” said the dwarf sarcastically.
“From what?”
“From that witch downstairs.”
“That’s my grandma!”
“She says she’s your grandma.”
Ella growled in frustration.
“You’re idiots. The lot of you.”
“Says the woman trapped inside the witch’s house.”
The bluebirds trilled in agreement.
Ella closed the curtains.
“Oh, so you’re not going to open the window?” snapped the dwarf. “How rude!”
Ella ran for the stairs. “Granny! Granny!”
Rose appeared at the foot of the stairs, oven tin in hand. “I was just doing t’gravy.”
“You’ve got visitors,” said Ella.
“What kind?”
“Dwarfs.”
Rose’s mouth set into a firm line. “The little buggers can try.”
In the kitchen, Rose set the gravy aside, tssked at the fact that the Yorkshires were nearly done but would have to wait and then offered a shotgun to Ella.
“God, no.”
“Right. Then tha’s on broom duty.”
Ella looked at the broom Rose thrust into her hand.
“For whacking the little gits. Now, where are they?”
“Five of them coming from the wood. The other was dropped on the roof by these two bluebirds that keep —” Ella stopped as the flue leading off the stove started to clank and thump.
“I’d wager t’other one thought to come down t’chimney,” said Rose. The thumping intensified. “Which is all fine and dandy in books but, in real life…”
A muffled howl emanated from the metal flue pipe.
“That’s not going to end well,” said Rose with a devilish smile.
“I’m stuck!” shrieked the stifled voice of Passive Aggressive. “Don’t all rush at once to help me!”
Grandmother and granddaughter got outside in time to see the dwarfs reach the picket fence. Rose unhurriedly broke open the shotgun, removed the one spent cartridge and replaced it with a fresh one from her pocket.
“I covered the pit again while tha was doing tha ablutions,” said Rose as Inappropriate bounded through the gate and disappeared into the hole.
Psycho gave a Braveheart yell as he ran, swerved to avoid the gate and vaulted over the fence. He landed on a concealed bear trap. Spring-loaded jaws snapped up and grabbed him by the thighs.
“Aaagh! You evil old cow!” he screamed.
“Oh, that is the dwarf I met!” said Rose, pleasantly surprised. “I’d recognise that swearing anywhere.”
Beyond the gate, OCD held out his arms to stop the other dwarfs rushing in.
“Stop,” he told them. “It’s too dangerous.”
Windy parped worryingly.
“You think she’s set more traps?”
“It’s not that,” said OCD. “Gardens are dangerous places. Did you know, over six thousand people are put in hospital each year in lawnmower accidents? Over five thousand injured by flowerpots.”
“I got attacked by flowerpots once,” burbled Shitfaced.
“Attacked?” said OCD.
“Okay,” Shitfaced admitted. “I might have started it but I swear one of them was looking at my pint.”
OCD got down on his hands and knees and peered down into the pit.
“Are you all right down there?”
“Sure,” said Inappropriate. “S’not the first time I’ve gone down in an old lady’s garden.”
“Enough talking!” grunted Psycho as he struggled against the trap. “Get in there!”
Rose stepped forward and raised the shotgun to her shoulder.
“I don’t think tha’s going anywhere but back the way tha came.”
At that the two bluebirds swooped down, twittering, claws at the ready, at Granny Rose. Ella instinctively swung at them with the broom but only succeeded in throwing Rose’s aim wide.
“Attack!” screamed Psycho. “Attack now!”
With one member stuck up a chimney, another stuck down a hole and another still wriggling out of a bear trap, the dwarfs attacked as a not entirely threatening band of three. Windy got his foot stuck in a hidden snare and went down with a bugling bum-pop of distress. OCD ran down the path, ensuring he noted any trip hazards and making sure didn’t tread on any cracks in the paving. Only Shitfaced, arms windmilling like an after-hours pub car park fighting champion, presented a credible threat.
Ella caught the dwarf in the chest with her broom, swung him up and round and, entirely by accident, flung him in through the open kitchen window. Rose pointed her shotgun at the two still mobile dwarfs. OCD burbled something about shotgun injuries being mostly self-inflicted but ran for the bushes when Rose put her finger to the trigger.
There was the sound of smashing crocker
y from within the kitchen.
“Why’d tha let him inside?” Rose snapped at Ella.
“I didn’t let him in, Granny,” but she was already talking to Rose’s back.
In the kitchen, Shitfaced had magically located a bottle of booze and was jigging along the counter, kicking bowls and cups aside.
“That’s my best cooking sherry!” Rose exclaimed. “That’s only for trifles and medicinal purposes!”
The thumping from the stove had changed in tone now. The banging was not coming from the flue but, seemingly, from inside the oven itself. Ella thought she could hear faint and desperate squeals of “Hot coals! Hot coals!”
Rose swung her gun towards the destructive dancing dwarf, a futile threat given that the alcoholic fellow was moving very nearly drunk beyond caring.
“Hang on,” said Ella, nipped forward and opened the lid of the twin tub washing machine and let the dwarf tap dance himself right in. She slammed the lid shut again.
“I’m blind!” peeped Shitfaced. “They said it’d be the drink that’d do it but I said, no, it would probably be the frantic mastu —”
“Now, hold it there, you conniving cows!” growled Psycho from the doorway.
He had freed himself from the bear trap but his tunic was ripped and his trousers missing. Gathered menacingly behind him were Windy, OCD and Inappropriate.
“You need to come with us, bab,” Psycho said to Ella. “She means you no good.”
“You said that about Myra.”
“Her too,” said Psycho. “Bitches and witches the lot of them.”
Ella jerked a thumb at her grandma.
“She says my mum’s still alive.”
Psycho frowned. “Was that the Glass Coffin Gambit?” he whispered tersely to his companions.
“The Spinning Wheel Gambit,” OCD corrected him.
“You knew?” said Ella, furious.
“Don’t you get fucking riled with me, bab,” countered Psycho. “We’re just doing our bastard jobs. Now are you coming with us or are we taking you down?”
“Don’t you dare come near her!” spat Rose, taking aim.
“Don’t need to,” said Windy, clenching.
With the whine of an insect behind glass, Windy let loose with a tightly controlled and seemingly endless fart.